


All In the Family

by evilhippo



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Dark, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-25
Updated: 2011-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 17:37:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilhippo/pseuds/evilhippo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead."</p>
            </blockquote>





	All In the Family

Somewhere in London a camera focuses in on a woman crossing the street. No one is watching, but this image, out of thousands, still merits attention. Her walk is brisk—about average for the city, but quick for her age. She's carrying a bag over her shoulder, and nearby sensors pick up traces of explosives. A message goes out to a secure mobile.

 

No one had made a connection when a cafeteria had mysteriously exploded around Mycroft in his second year of university. They'd chalked it up to some kind of experiment—most people did have a habit of forgetting which of them was scientifically-inclined. But Mycroft knew it was a warning. Earlier in the week he'd received a letter from Sherlock about something he'd discovered in their home.

He was somewhat flattered that their mother thought he was old enough to fend for himself, though he did somewhat resent the fact that avoiding her traps cut into his study time. Still, it took him only a few months to amass a network of people who considered themselves close enough to him to protect him. He set up a rudimentary surveillance network around campus, enlisting the help of the tech-savvy and socially-inclined in equal measure, soon studying their reports in tandem with the great books.

As he grew, so did the network of people and cameras, until it was ubiquitous in the town. In the years of internet start-ups and booming dot-coms, his network was able to assume legitimacy. The local MP caught wind of it soon after, and it was quietly tied into the backbone of the country itself. Mycroft's transition out of his early 20s was like a metamorphosis in reverse, as his cocoon coalesced around him.

For every step Mycroft took upwards, however, Sherlock ducked still lower. Mycroft's distance and isolation had left him to deal with the impact of his discovery alone. In a way, it drove him mad. It stood out in his mind as one thing that he could not understand, and he spent his teenage years trying to force it to make sense. He'd followed the secret down the metaphorical rabbit hole, and to everyone else, it looked like his end would come at his own hands, without so much as a push from another.

The only person who didn't believe this was Mycroft, and he was preoccupied with protecting his own interests (namely: himself). There were small parts of his network that reached out toward Sherlock, and they were closely monitored, but that was all the closer his protective bubble would let him get while Sherlock was engaged with his own self-destruction.

Sherlock's teenage years were spent building up a wall against the outside world, and behind it he laid down the kind of platitudes about the other side that were meant to soothe his ego and reinforce his own world view. No one would know what he knew—ever. They needed his guidance to even know what the information could be used for. Even if they seemed to understand, they couldn't but trusted not to just take the information and run, like his brother had.

It was years before he stumbled into police custody, tied up in a web of drug runners and dealers, seeming to be the weakest link among them. The investigators were surprised to find that he not only knew all the information they were looking for, but provided it to them before they'd even asked. In the interview room he'd pulled a notebook out of his pocket and placed it on the table. Inside were notes that would lead to indictments of a large portion of the drug underground in London. He was able to spin his role as a private investigator, and a few nicked files from the officers' desks had secured the first protection he'd had in his entire life. He quickly made himself too valuable an asset to lose, and made a career of being a professional witness for the police. Though the crimes he investigated crept ever-closer to his inner world, his adult life became a kind of reverse interrogation with the world outside his mind.

Mycroft's network had picked up on this change, and while he'd been proud to see it, it changed little in their relationship at first. For all his efforts, Mycroft still blamed Sherlock for their mother's turn against them, though he'd been the one to send her a letter asking for confirmation, no doubt making him the one to upset her. Youth was unequivocally stupid, and he was guiltily grateful that he'd missed out on much of his brother's—though Sherlock often found ways to demonstrate that even past thirty he wasn't long outside of youthful stupidity.

Case in point being the swimming pool.

 

When the mobile in Mycroft's pocket buzzes, he already knows what he's going to read across the screen. He's standing in the rubble of what used to be a natatorium, and his brother has picked up a piece of cloth from the debris. It's a crisp cotton kerchief, white despite its evident age. It makes a stark contrast to the new Westwood sleeve that formerly hid it. In the centre is a blood stain, the point around which this cloth was cut. Both understand its meaning immediately. “If anyone is going to kill you, it will be me.”


End file.
